Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart
Nehemiah 9:35
Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works
Deuteronomy 28:47
Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything
Does history repeat it’s self? Think about the time of Israelites and how they reacted to God’s goodness. In this time of abundance and goodness they chose not to serve God. In fact they chose to actually turn away from. Why???? It seems apparent that every time they are in great distress they sought out God and there was a time of re-commitment to serve and follow Him and His ways. Yet in time of abundance it took less than one generation to fall away. So how does a culture fall way from serving and following Him – ONE PERSON AT A TIME. Think about it in our own life. Are we accepting more and more of what the culture around us is doing to the point where we embrace it as being ok. Do we speak up? Do we lead? Or do we just blindly follow? There are a couple of reasons we fall away – we don’t spend time in His word and because of this we have no means of comparing the culture and what is accepted in it to what God clearly sets. We have no excuse – God’s word is fully available to each one of us and as it only takes one person at a time to lead a culture away from God so it is also true that one person at a time leading a culture toward Him.